November 01, 2014

THE FIRST WAY AGAIN...

I am re-reading for the umpteenth time Marilynne Robinson's essay on Psalm Eight. What a gift writers are to us, opening up what we see, hear and know in an ever deepening way. Here she describes not only a seed falling to the ground, but the intention of the ground receiving it.

...The families of both my parents settled and established themselves in the northern mountains, where there is a special sweetness in the light and grace in the vegetation, and as well a particular tenderness in the contact of light and vegetation. We used to hunt for wild strawberries in places in the woods where there had once been fires. These meadows, which for decades or centuries would hardly have felt more sunlight than the floor of the sea, were avid for it. Because of the altitude, or the damp, or the kind of grass that grew in such places, they were radiant, smoldering, gold with transparency, accepting light altogether. Thousands of florets for which I would never learn names, so tiny even a child had to kneel to see them at all, squandered intricacy and opulence on avid little bees, the bees cherished, the flowers cherished, the light cherished, visibly, audibly, palpably.

John Calvin says that when a seed falls into the ground it is cherished there, by which he means that everything the seed contains by way of expectation is foreseen and honoured. One might as well say the earth invades the seed, seizes it as occasion to compose itself in some brief shape. Groundwater in a sleeve of tissue, flaunting improbable fragrances and iridescences as the things of this strange world are so inclined to do. So a thriving place is full of intention, a sufficiency awaiting expectation, teasing hope beyond itself.

Marilynne Robinson (The Death of Adam, Essays on Modern Thought, Psalm Eight)